


Crutches

by Jinmukang



Series: Batfam Week 2020 [3]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Family Fluff, I don't only write angst you know, Minor Injuries, what can i say
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:20:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23093947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jinmukang/pseuds/Jinmukang
Summary: Immobilized and incredibly bored, Dick wonders how he’s going to survive the night alone in his Blüdhaven apartment. Thankfully, he doesn’thaveto be alone.-o-o-o-o-Batfam Day 3 / Injuries
Relationships: Cassandra Cain & Tim Drake & Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne & Damian Wayne
Series: Batfam Week 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1658566
Comments: 14
Kudos: 175
Collections: Tales from the Cave





	Crutches

**Author's Note:**

> Not much to say to this one besides enjoy!

Dick sighs and leans further back into his couch, lazily flipping the channel as he does so. He tries to keep his elevated foot out of his line of vision and the pain pulsing from it. The pain killers aren’t helping much, and it’s not like he can ask for more at the moment because people will wonder why he has such a high tolerance to pain meds. 

Of course he broke his ankle, and of course it was in the line of duty where other officers saw his foot fall in a random dip in some grass and twist unnaturally in some sort of freak accident. They’re never going to let him live this down, and Amy is never going to let him back onto the force until _she’s_ sure he’s at one hundred percent. If he had just broken his foot during patrol he could have just taken a couple weeks off and then smiled through the pain and no one would have noticed a thing.

He sighs again, louder this time as the TV quickly becomes boring. There’s nothing on besides reruns of Big Bang Theory and some random college football game and his mouth is dry and his stomach is growling but he really doesn’t want to get up because getting up means crutches and crutches means grinding his teeth and mentally screaming about how he could have easily just launched himself over the couch and into the kitchen within seconds just a couple days ago.

He glares at his offending foot and closes his eyes, ignoring the thirst, ignoring the hunger, ignoring the pulsing in his limb, and tries to just fade away into the noise of the TV.

But, in true Dick Grayson fashion, he quickly gets bored.

“Ugh.” He tosses the remote across the couch and opens his eyes slightly so he can glare at his crutches. He needs to do something. Never in his life has he ever felt the need to just _do_ something. Cook. Shop. Hell, he wants to _clean_ his entire apartment and _that’s_ saying _something_.

Instead, he grabs his stupid crutches and gently rises himself with a simple destination in mind because doing much more will have his leg hurting more than it already is, and call him as irresponsible with his injuries as you want he _does_ know how to take care of himself.

Most of the time...

He begins to hobble over to the kitchen with his eyes on the cupboard where he knows he has a small stash of coco-puffs. He _thinks_ he has a little bit of milk left in the fridge but honestly water works just fine if he’s in a pinch. Yes, he knows that’s sacrilegious, but he needs to get his hands doing something, even if that’s tainting the holy ways of cereal just to get his hands moving.

‘Cause if his hands are moving, then his eyes aren’t trailing to the window where the sun is starting to set and crime is starting to rise. Nightwing can’t go out tonight. Blüdhaven can last a night or two before Dick whiddles down his pride enough to ask for help, right?

Man. He hates injuries. 

He’s halfway to the kitchen when something catches his attention: a knock at the door. Normally, he’s all for company, but right now his foot is pulsing and he wants a tainted bowl of cereal but now he has to turn and try not to trip over the random assortment of crap he has on the floor to get to his door. It’s probably nothing important. A solicitor who’s risking working a little later in the day. Do solicitors work evenings? He grew up in a mansion and before that a circus trailer, how should he know?

He should probably get one of those “No Solicitors” signs, he thinks when the knocking on the door repeats.

He sighs and slowly maneuvers his crutches around a discarded pair of boxers—how did that even get there?!—and makes his way over to the door. He leans on his good foot and painfully positions himself on the other side of the door so when he opens it it wont hit his crutch and trip him.

He opens the door a crack.

“Yeah?” He asks before he actually looks at his visitors. But when he does get a look at them, his eyes widen in shock.

“Good evening, Master Dick, I hope we are not a bother?” Alfred smiles and behind him, Cass waves and Tim shoves his phone in his pocket to smile while Bruce folds his arms across his chest and Damian matches his father and glares down at Dick’s foot.

Dick blinks stupidly. “I uh. What?” 

“Are you going to invite us in, dickhead?” Jason voice calls from the back and Dick finds himself releasing a shocked bubble of laughter. He didn’t notice Jason back there. 

What a strange sight this is to see, his entire family standing in the hallway of his cramped apartment complex. He swings the door open wider and Damian instantly ducks under his arm to claim his normal spot on the sofa. 

“What are all of you doing here?” Dick asks as Cass walks up to him and carefully wraps her hands around his shoulders to give him a quick hug.

Bruce pats his shoulder as he walks inside and Cass follows him and Alfred into his kitchen. Jason shrugs before he walks in.

“I’m only here for the free food- ouch!” Jason glares down at Tim who has just punched his arm. 

“We’re all just visiting,” Tim says nonchalantly before he and Jason—who’s angrily rubbing his arm—walk into the apartment.

Dick laughs and closes the door, hobbling to turn around and see his apartment full of some of the most important people in the world to him. This little apartment can hardly hold all of them. Tim is fighting with Damian about taking up the whole sofa while Jason perches on the windowsill and pulls out his phone. Cassandra is helping Alfred scavenge the kitchen for any kind of usable ingredients for Dick suspects dinner and Bruce opening a bag he had brought with him onto the table and carefully taking out various cans and produce that they must have already known Dick had no chance of having himself.

“Honestly, Master Dick, you need to go shopping,” Alfred tuts. 

“And you need to elevate that foot,” Bruce says, not looking up from his task. “Tim, get Dick to sit down.”

Tim stops his mini-wrestling contest with Damian and they both jump to their feet and rush over to him even though Damian wasn’t even asked to.

Dick soon finds himself being reluctantly lead to the center of the couch and sat down. Damian grabs his crutches and places them near the arms of the sofa and then effectively pins Dick down by curling up under his arm. Tim kicks some mess out of the way and then shoves the coffee table forward and places a throw pillow down onto the edge closes Tto Dick and points at it, lifting an eyebrow.

Dick rolls his eyes, but complies. Next thing he knows, Tim is inserting himself under Dick’s other arm and Dick ruffles his hair, extremely content despite still being extremely confused.

“How’d you guys find out I was hurt? Did Amy call you?”

“Your captain rang, yes,” Alfred affirmed as he gave the ingredients he had managed to scavenge a critical eye. “She worried you wouldn’t take care of yourself.”

Bruce steps back from the kitchen as Cass begins to shoo him out, smartly deciding that Bruce shouldn’t be anywhere in the kitchen while cooking is going on. “But we’re here because we want to be, chum.”

“What about Gotham?” Dick asks and behind him Jason snorts.

“There’s more heroes in Gotham besides us, stupid.”

Bruce hums and settles down on a chair he dragged with him from the kitchen. “Stephanie and Kate are taking up patrol tonight. Your friends Roy and Wally have agreed to make a round through the Haven. They’ll call us if anything happens. Don’t worry about it right now.”

Suddenly, Jason’s had is entering his field of vision and the pressure of a chest leaning against the back of his head appears as Jason reaches over three heads to snatch the remote before anyone else could. Tim squawks in protest and Damian jostles Dick’s side to try and make a mad grab for the device, but Jason effectively retreats a safe distance away and begins to open options on his tv he didn’t even know he had.

Dick’s TV has Netflix?

He hates technology.

“We’re not watching your stupid show, Todd!” Damian hisses, reluctantly sliding back onto Dick’s side. The action of Dami choosing to remain cuddled up to his eldest brother instead of hurtleling over the couch to duel for the remote to avoid some mystery show is apparently more important and it makes Dick’s heart swell. He leans over and gives Damian a sneaky kiss at the top of his head and Damian reacts predictably by crying out and swatting at Dick’s face.

“Shut up, short-stack. It’s a _classic_.”

“We should just watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine, we all like that,” Tim argues back and Jason snaps back that Dick’s TV does not, in fact, have Hulu. Which Dick supposes is a cause for sadness? He’s never heard of Hulu or Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Though, he’s sure whatever his brothers’ want to watch he’ll like it regardless.

Turns out, Jason’s “stupid” show is The Office. As the cold-open begins to play, Dick sighs in content, breathing in as the smell of sizzling bell peppers and meat reaches the living room. Another weight joins the couch as Cass lays herself down across Damian, Tim, and Dick, carefully avoiding jostling his leg in the process. Alfred announces that dinner will be ready in a little more than half an hour and Bruce begins to annoyingly critique the plot line of the show.

Dick sighs in content and closes his eyes.

“Do you want to watch something different, Dick?” Tim’s voice pipes up, mistaking his closed eyes as meaning he’s not enjoying the show. 

“Nah, I’m just enjoying Netflix-and-chill-ing with my family.”

“First of all,” Damian snarls from besides him, “cease using the phrase if you’re not going to learn what it means. Second of all, no one says that anymore.”

“Yeah, cuz it’s Disney+ and Chill now,” Jason adds helpfully as Tim cries out in distress. 

Cass begins to draw patterns on Dick’s knee with her finger and Bruce begins to demand what that phrase means while Alfred tut-tuts that Damian is too young to know what that means because _of course_ Alfred knew it. The show falls to the background and Dick doesn’t close his eyes, just smiles and watches as his family begins to bicker and banter.

His cure for his boredom found. Everything will be fine, because he has his family to watch his back without him even having to ask.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading :)


End file.
